Since the introduction of the microprocessor to mechanical ventilation systems, the industry has produced a potentially confusing plethora of options for breath modes, breath types and other therapies. The growth of applications has, to some extent, been fueled by competition between manufacturers and the result is a collection of critical care ventilators that attempt to be all things to all users. Lost in this are the occasional practitioners who are not experts in all the varied approaches and who work only infrequently with a ventilator. These users can be put off by the complexity of the user interface and may not be knowledgeable enough to select the appropriate therapy for a given subject. For instance, a severe flu epidemic or nerve gas terrorist attack might mean deploying large numbers of ventilators in the hands of minimally trained first responders.
In view of the importance of being capable of providing mechanical ventilation to a large number of subjects with minimal clinician support during an emergency, there is a need for a method of automatic control of a mechanical ventilator that may require the entering of a single subject physical characteristic for initiating mechanical ventilation on a subject, automatically managing said subject's mechanical ventilation, transitioning a mechanical ventilator to subject controlled ventilation, and weaning said subject from mechanical ventilation.